Jewelry Lovers

These attractive and original necklaces are made from oven-baked clay beads, painted with bright enamel paint and threaded or linked with jeweler’s wire. The beads can be left plain, interspersed with bought beads for contrast, or made in a variety of shapes and sizes to create individual and unusual jewelry.

The red choker

Make 26 clay beads (see Jewelry from Clay), grading the sizes from large beads, to position at the centre front, through successively smaller pairs, so that the beads at the centre back of the choker are approximately half the size of the front ones. Leave the beads to dry overnight. Bake the beads in the oven to harden them finally, following the instruction on the pack.

When the beads are cool, they are ready to paint. A useful paint rack can be made by rolling out a long sausage of clay and sticking a row of toothpicks vertically into it. First paint the top half of the bead, then turn it upside down, place on the paint rack and paint the underside. The beads illustrated here are painted with bright red enamel paint.

Measure the circumference of the neck and cut off a length of 16 gauge wire equal to this length. Bend the wire gently so that it curves around the neck. Using the round pliers, bend one end of the wire over to form a ring.

Lay the painted beads out in the size sequence and begin threading them onto the wire. The necklace illustrated here has small black glass beads positioned between the red beads, and the necklace is finished off at each end with two black beads. Use the round pliers to bend the other end of the wire carefully over to form a loop.

The links

Take a hand drill and clamp it in a bench vice in such a way that the drill may be freely rotated. Take the No.9 [U.S. size 4] knitting needle and place the pointed end in the drill. Take a length of 18 gauge wire and make a right-angled bend at one end. Hook this short end into any one of the spaces between the three jaws of the chuck. The wire should pass over the front of the needle. Now grip the knitting needle with the right hand as if it were a pencil, placing the thumb on the section of wire which passes over the knitting needle. With the left hand, slowly turn the handle of the drill so that the knitting needle revolves in the direction indicated. This will make the wire wind up on the needle to form a coil. Guide the wire with the thumb as it is winding so that the coil is very tight. When all the wire is wound around the needle, the coil can be pulled off.

To cut the links from the coil, take the coil in the left hand and hold it vertically between the thumb and first finger, press the coil against a table top. Use the jewelry piercing saw to cut through the top of the coil.

As the blade cuts through the top of the coil, the first link falls away. Always hold the coil tightly between the thumb and first finger while sawing. Do not use too thick a blade to cut the links or the gap in the link will be too large to close securely. Always use two pairs of flat pliers to open the links and to pinch them closed.

Make two chains each composed of eight links. Link the chains to the ends of the choker as shown .

Make two hooks and link to the chains to complete the necklace.

Green and white beads

Make 11 pairs of green beads, graded in size, by rolling out a `sausage’ of clay, thicker at one end and tapering towards the other end. Slice off the beads with a sharp knife and make the centre holes with a toothpick. Make 23 small round beads as described above, and bake the beads in the same way. Paint the large tubular beads bright green with enamel paint. The smaller beads are left plain.

Wire each bead up as follows. Pass one end of a length of wire through the bead, and use the round pliers to bend the end over to form a loop.

Cut the wire, leaving a length sufficient to make a loop on the other side of the bead.

Make a number of links as described for the red choker (above), and pass a link through the loop at each side of each bead. Begin the necklace at the centre front with a small white bead, and use a third link at each side to join both sides of the centre bead to the largest of the pairs of green beads. Continue linking the beads in this way until ten green beads and eleven white beads are linked ending with a white bead at each end. Join the two white beads with a slightly larger link, made on No.7 [U.S. No.6] knitting needle. Link two more white beads into the larger link, and continue threading the beads until there are 12 white and 12 green beads in the upper part of the necklace, ending with a green bead at each end. From the last bead link two small links and one large link.

Make a hook using the method described above to complete the necklace.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Wire and clay